Why go
Layers held in memory
The Croissant Gourmand XXL sits at the counter while Philippe Conticini, pastry chef at Philippe Conticini in the 16th Arrondissement, Paris, keeps the house language tied to texture, contrast, and recall. His route to this bench passed through Alain Dutournier's double Michelin-starred Trou Gascon and Maxim's Roissy outlet, then Gray d'Albion, Peltier, La Table d'Anvers, Petrossian, and Pâtisserie des Rêves. The discipline shows in the way this maison uses his name: not as a signature stamped at the end, but as the governing method. Conticini was born in 1963, worked as pastry assistant at Gray d'Albion from 1983 to 1985, became pastry chef at Peltier from 1985, and shaped a full pastry identity as co-owner and head pastry chef at La Table d'Anvers from 1986 to 1998. His later work at Petrossian in Paris and New York, in Paris and Tokyo with Peltier pâtisseries, and on screen as creator and host of Jeux de Goûts widened the format without loosening the hand. Here, the line is clear: French classics are not preserved under glass. They are rebuilt for the next bite.
XXL viennoiserie and composed pastry
The program is pastry-led, with viennoiserie given the same authorial weight as a finished gâteau. The official families move from Viennoiseries & XXL into sec, moelleux, cadeaux, masterclasses, and events, a structure that makes the boutique less a bread shop than a pastry house with a public bench. The Croissant Gourmand XXL is the flagship gesture, joined by the Croissant XL aux amandes, a large-format almond variation that keeps laminated dough at the front of the counter. On the pastry side, Tarte Framboise Bergamote, Le Nuage, Fraisier, and Le pur Vanille carry the more composed register: fruit and citrus, lightness, strawberry, vanilla. Conticini's wider signature, the verrine, belongs to the same thinking. He conceived that glass-built format in 1994, using layers, visual clarity, and changing spoonfuls rather than a single flat sweetness. The current maison opened in 2018, after decades of kitchens, consultancies, and teaching; its product language still depends on sequence, cut, filling, and the pressure of contrast.
An airy counter, not a dining room
The room works as a polished pâtisserie, built around display, collection, and presentation rather than a long table service. Pastries stand forward, especially the oversized pieces, so the counter becomes the pass between the bench and the customer. The feel is intimate and refined, with a conversational level of noise and a modern surface that keeps attention on the pastry case. The house also uses masterclasses as part of its public craft, with sessions around grands classiques and praliné. That matters because the work here is not only sold as finished objects; part of the maison's identity sits in transmission, in showing the gesture behind a cream, a praline, or a laminated fold. Seating is not stated with enough clarity to describe a café rhythm, so the truer picture is boutique, counter, and display.
The name on the box
Philippe Conticini is a multi-address Paris maison, with branches including Place Dauphine, Galeries Lafayette, and Montmartre, at the 16th Arrondissement address. End at the counter, with Le pur Vanille beside the Croissant Gourmand XXL.
